A client pays me $90 an hour for the same work my day job pays me a salary to do.
$9,400 from two contracts, at roughly four hours a week each, while employed full-time. A 6-week live cohort for employed marketers who want to build the same thing — without quitting anything, and without asking anyone's permission. That hourly rate is where I started. It isn't where the money is — I'll show you both.
20-minute call · 8 seats · no payment on this page
The markup
Your work leaves your desk at £23 an hour and arrives at the client at £400 a day.
Here's what actually happens. You build the campaign. It ships under your employer's name, or an agency's, and it gets billed at a day rate you never see a line of. Same campaign. Same hands. Different invoice.
Nobody's doing anything wrong. That's the deal employment makes: you trade the upside for the certainty, and for a lot of people that's a fair trade.
The problem is that most people with a billable skill think it's the only deal on offer. It isn't. There is a live market paying £350–500 a day for exactly what you already do, and it doesn't require you to quit anything, build an audience, or become a different person.
What stops people isn't the skill. It's that nobody ever told them what their hour is worth, who's buying it, or what to say when someone asks for a price.
That's a six-week problem, not a career problem.
Fit
Which of these do you already do?
- Paid media
- SEO
- Paid social
- Email & CRM
- Analytics & tracking
- CRO
- Content & copy
- Marketing ops
If you're employed doing any of these, the mechanics are the same. The channel changes, the pricing conversation doesn't. My own background is paid media — that's the example I'll use most — but what this cohort teaches is how to package, price, find and close, and that's identical whether you're selling PPC or lifecycle email.
The receipts
Here are the receipts.
All of it around a full-time job.
I've never been a full-time freelancer. Never built a personal brand, never quit anything, never sold a course before this one. I'm a working digital marketer who bills clients on the side — and I've been doing it for over a decade.
$5,815.28 at $75/hour
78 hours across four months. About 4.4 hours a week. Five stars.
“Super professional upworker. Would use again.”
$3,586.60 at $60/hour
61 hours across three months. About 4.1 hours a week. Five stars.
“Super proactive and fast in helping us audit, restructure and optimise our AdWords account.”
$9,211.10 at $80/hour
115 hours and still running. This is a live contract, billed at $80 an hour, alongside a full-time job — proof this isn't history.
$2,959.40 at $90/hour
34 hours, gambling affiliate Google Ads. Job in progress. Five stars. My highest verified hourly rate.
“Brendan is an experienced digital marketeer with a very professional approach.”
$12,533.50 at $50/hour
251 hours, Sep 2022 – Nov 2022. Programmatic DV360 specialist. Five stars.
“It was great working with Brendan. His expertise in DV360 has given our team great insights.”
What the coaching produced
Three people I coached. Three clients they still have.
Everything above this is mine — my contracts, my rates, my receipts. Which proves I can do it, and proves nothing about whether you can.
So here's the part that matters more. Before this cohort existed, I ran a small informal group — friends and people I knew, taught in exactly the way I'll teach here: how to find clients worth having, and how to package the work so it doesn't eat your week. These are three of the retainers that came out of it.
Look at the time column. Not one of these takes half a day a month. Look at the third column and you'll see why — none of them sold hours. Each one sold a result the client would pay to stop worrying about, and priced it against that rather than against a timesheet. That framing is the whole difference between a £60-an-hour freelancer and a £550-a-month retainer.
It also inverts what most people assume. The most profitable of the three is the easiest one. Forty minutes a month, because the account was set up properly and doesn't need babysitting. Low-touch and high-margin turn out to be the same thing.
Week two is entirely this. You'll leave it with your own skill written up as a package, priced, and scoped so it stays low-touch.
My contracts say I did this. These listings say it's available right now.
Average UK day rate for marketing & communications contractors in 2025, up from £389 in 2024, across 261,000+ freelance contracts.
YunoJuno Freelancer Rates ReportAverage day rate specifically for freelance Biddable Managers — paid search, paid social, programmatic. US equivalent: $60/hour.
YunoJuno — Biddable Manager ratesWhat experienced UK PPC freelancers charge hourly; senior specialists with large-budget track records go to £100–£150.
JH Marketing — UK PPC freelancer costsThird-party benchmarks, not my numbers. The market pays these rates whether or not I exist.
This is what the market pays for what you already do.
Every figure is the 2025 average day rate published by YunoJuno for that job role, drawn from 261,000+ freelance contracts. Category average across marketing & communications: £418/day, up from £389 in 2024.
And the money actually landing in the bank
That £67k year was 2015 — I've been at this a long time. A single client has paid me £13,000. And this isn't history: I'm running paid media on retainer right now, alongside my job, at £2,000 a month plus three other freelance clients.
Here's the number that should actually interest you. $90 an hour is roughly £69 an hour. If you're on a £45,000 salary, your employer is paying you about £23 an hour for the same skill.
That gap is the entire business. It isn't a secret, it isn't complicated, and most people with a billable skill never close it — because nobody ever showed them how to price it, where to find the client, or what to say on the call.
The numbers
One client pays for this.
The smallest of those three coached retainers is £350 a month for forty minutes of work. One client at that level covers the cohort inside four months, and then keeps paying every month after.
That's the numbers against real billed rates, not a projection of yours.
I'm not promising you a client. I'm showing you what one is worth if you get it, so you can judge the price against something real before you ever see it.
The numbers, with your numbers
Same hours. Two ways to sell them.
The hourly figure uses published freelance rates for your skill. The retainer figure applies the multiple achieved across the three coached retainers above. It is the numbers, not a forecast — whether you reach it depends on finding the client and pricing the conversation properly, which is what the six weeks teach.
Enrolment closes 10 September · 8 seats
Eight founding seats. Starts 15 September 2026.
Enrolment closes 10 September · 8 seats
The offer
What you actually get
Six weeks. Live. Eight people. This is not a course you log into — it's six sessions with me and a small group, built around your actual situation.
Six live group sessions
One a week, 60–90 minutes, on Zoom, at 5:00pm UK / 12:00pm ET. Not pre-recorded. You can ask questions and get answers in the room. All sessions recorded if you miss one.
A 5-week plan built for your circumstances
Not a generic curriculum. In week one we map your actual skill, your actual available hours, and your actual constraints — including your employment contract — and you leave with a specific sequence for the next five weeks.
Direct feedback on your client outreach
You write the messages, I tell you why they're not landing. This is the part that most separates a cohort from a PDF. Send me what you sent, get it back marked up.
A private group chat, running the whole six weeks
Between sessions. Ask when you're stuck, post when you land something. Small enough that it doesn't turn into noise.
The templates I actually use
Pricing and packaging structures, discovery call frameworks, outreach messages, client onboarding. Included because they save you time — not stacked up and given a fake dollar value.
That's the whole offer. There are no bonuses, no upsells, and nothing withheld for a higher tier.
The curriculum
How the six weeks run
Your specific setup
What you can sell, what it's worth, how many hours you actually have. You leave with a written plan and a target rate.
Packaging: selling outcomes, not hours
How to turn “I do paid media” into a monthly retainer a client can say yes to. What to charge, how to scope it so it stays low-touch, and why the easiest clients end up being the most profitable ones.
Where clients come from
The channels that work when you have four hours a week and no personal brand. Your outreach list gets built in this session.
Outreach, live
You send. We review what came back. This is where most people's first replies happen.
The call
Discovery call structure, what to say when they ask your rate, how to handle “we'll think about it.” Roleplayed, not just explained.
Close, onboard, repeat
Getting the first one signed and delivered without wrecking your week. Then how the second and third client make it recurring rather than a one-off.
The goal is a signed first client by the end of week six. Some people get there in week three. Some don't get there inside the six weeks — see below, I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
Six weeks. Eight seats. You keep the job.
Enrolment closes 10 September · 8 seats
Fit check
Be honest about which one you are
This is for you if:
- +You're employed in digital marketing, paid media, SEO, CRM or similar
- +You can find 4–6 hours a week and you're being realistic about that
- +You want extra income alongside your job, not a leap out of it
- +You're willing to send messages to strangers and be told your first draft is bad
This isn't for you if:
- −You don't yet have a marketable skill — this cohort doesn't teach marketing, it teaches selling the marketing you can already do
- −You want a passive income stream. Freelancing is work you do for money. It's just better-paid work
- −You want to be handed a client list
- −You can't commit to being live on six calls
If you're in the second list, don't book a call. I'd rather you didn't than have you spend the money and be frustrated.
The founder
Who's running this
The realisation
I'm Brendan. I run paid media — Meta and Google — as my day job. Years ago I worked out that the campaigns I was managing for a salary were the same campaigns agencies were charging thousands for. That gap never stopped being true, and it's still the whole idea.
Doing it around a job
I've run freelance clients alongside full-time employment for over a decade. Not a leap, not a personal brand, not a course funnel — just clients, invoices, and a few hours a week. £67,000 in my best year. £13,000 from a single client. $34,106 through Upwork alone.
Why I'm teaching it
I'm still doing the thing I'm teaching, this month, with real clients and real budgets. Most people selling freelancing advice stopped freelancing a long time ago, which is why their advice sounds like it was written in 2019.
What I'm good at: pricing, positioning, and the unglamorous mechanics of getting a stranger to reply. What I'm not: a mindset coach. There's no morning routine module.
Straight talk
What I'm not promising
I can't guarantee you'll land a client in six weeks. I don't know your skill level, your market, how many hours you'll really put in, or how well you'll take feedback. Some people in this cohort will finish without a client.
What I can tell you is what's in your control: the plan, the outreach, the pricing, the call structure, and someone experienced telling you where it's going wrong while you're doing it rather than after.
I've done this myself, part-time, around a job, repeatedly. I haven't run this as a cohort before — this is the first one, which is exactly why the seats are priced the way they are and why I'm keeping it to eight people.
Before you book
What actually happens on the call
You pick a time
Twenty minutes on Zoom. Three short questions when you book, so I turn up already knowing your situation.
We work out whether it fits
I'll ask what you do, how many hours you realistically have, and what's stopped you so far. You ask me whatever you want. I'll give you the price on the call — it's a four-figure commitment, so if that's out of range, say so early and we'll both save twenty minutes.
You decide, or I do
If it's not a fit, I'll tell you on the call. I'd rather run this with six people who belong in the room than eight who don't. If it is a fit, I'll send the details and you go away and think about it. Nobody pays anything on a first call.
Opens my calendar · 20 minutes · no payment on this page
Enrolment closes 10 September · 8 seats
Founding cohort
8 founding seats. Starts 15 September 2026.
Enrolment closes 10 September 2026 — 5 days before start · 8 seats · cohort begins 15 September 2026
This is the first cohort. That means two things.
For you: the founding price, which is meaningfully below what this will cost once there are cohort results to point at. And a group of eight rather than thirty, so there's actual time for your situation in every session.
For me: I want the case studies. I'll be more available than is strictly sustainable, because the first cohort's results are what the second one is sold on.
When the eight seats are gone, the next cohort starts at the standard price.
Book a 20-minute call. I'll ask about your skill, your hours and your situation, and tell you straight whether this is a fit. If it isn't, I'll say so on the call.
The refund
Two sessions to decide
Attend the first two sessions, do the work that's set, and if it isn't for you, tell me before session three and I'll refund you in full. After that the material is delivered and refunds aren't available. That's the whole policy — no forms, no conditions buried in a FAQ.
FAQ
The founding price is discussed on the call. It's a four-figure commitment, not a £49 course — if that's immediately out of range, the call will save us both time. I'd rather tell you the number in a conversation where I can also tell you whether it's worth it for your situation.
Nobody's going to offer you this. That's the whole point.
Your employer isn't going to raise your rate to market. The agency billing your work at £400 a day isn't going to cut you in. The only version of this that happens is the one you go and build, in the hours you already have.
Six weeks. Eight seats. You keep the job.
Enrolment closes 10 September · 8 seats